Illusions of circularity

There’s a lot of buzz on the concept of Circular Economy these days. It holds promises of creating a world free of waste and capable of keeping its materials in closed loops. The idea is strong, attractive and challenging and it looks like its simplicity is able to mobilise huge interest around the globe. Last week it reached the projection screens of Davos. There it caused excitement and even the announcement of a 4th industrial revolution.

Of course, we should welcome all interest in this field of resource conservation, sustainability and waste management. Nevertheless we need to be realistic in order to protect our politicians, policy-makers and public from disappointments caused by a new, green fata morgana.

Where does the concept come from and where does it lead us to? Let’s try to place its pleasant illusion into some straightforward perspective. As far as I know there is no new breakthrough technology able to do the job of circularity. Neither did I find any news on a major growth in private and public budgets spent on resource recovery nor a spectacular increase in our public awareness on this subject. It’s true; there has been some good progress on waste management and recycling in most developed countries. But at the same time we have to be honest and admit that we pushed away a large part of the tailings of our society towards developing countries and to remote places of our earth. Think for example of the effects of offshoring manufacturing capacity, producing ore-concentrates in desolated mining area’s, open burning of electronic waste on the shores of Africa and shipwrecks ending up on the shores of East-Asian countries.

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